Why the NHL needs to revamp a playoff system that penalizes stronger teams
Imagine, for a minute, that you're the Golden State Warriors.
You finished off a historic regular-season run and are making quick work of an inferior opponent in the first round of the playoffs. You'll soon be gearing up for a second-round tune-up before you finally face the closest thing your league has to a worthy foe in the conference finals.
Now imagine that instead of the Los Angeles Clippers or the Portland Trail Blazers -- a pair of teams that finished 20 and 29 games back of you, respectively -- that second-round opponent is going to be the 67-win San Antonio Spurs.
If that sounds unfair, it's because it absolutely is. But unfortunately, it's a reality facing several of the NHL's top teams as the league's conference semifinals begin this week.
Both the Eastern and Western Conferences will include one matchup of presumptive Stanley Cup favorites while also featuring a series between a pair lucky also-rans. It's totally backward and against the spirit of the playoffs to have the best playing the best while the worst play the worst, but it's a risk that comes with the NHL's strategy, and it's all being done in the name of division rivalry.
Now, before we get into the particulars of this postseason, some history: This massive imbalance we're seeing today is a result of the realignment the league underwent prior to the 2013-14 season, when the Winnipeg Jets moved to the Western Conference and the Detroit Red Wings and Columbus Blue Jackets shifted to the East.
The result was a 14-team Western Conference with two seven-team divisions, a 16-team Eastern Conference with two eight-team divisions and a new (yet old) approach to the playoffs: The top three teams in each division get in, plus the top two remaining teams in each conference, regardless of division, as wild cards.
This setup, while unconventional, could have probably worked out fine enough if the NHL seeded those teams 1-8 based on points and let them go at it. But the league instead pits the No. 2 and No. 3 teams in each division against each other in the first round, while the division winner with the most points draws the wild-card team with the fewest.
From there, the bracket dictates that the 2-seed/3-seed winner faces the No. 1 team from its own division (or the wild card that upsets the champ) for the right to move on to the conference finals.
For all intents and purposes, this division-based system mirrors the one used by the league from the early '80s through the 1992-93 season. The idea, both then and now, is that you'll have balanced divisions with four teams each in the playoffs and division winners playing division runners-up in each conference semifinal.
But under the current format, that's not always how things play out. And when they don't, things can get hairy.
Now that the first round is all but wrapped up (Pacific champ Anaheim and No. 1 wild card Nashville play a Game 7 Wednesday), this is how the West field has shaken out:
Dallas (109 points, No. 1 seed) vs. St. Louis (107 points, No. 2 seed)
San Jose (98 points, No. 6 seed) vs. Anaheim (103 points, No. 4 seed) or Nashville (96 points, No. 7 seed)
Yes, the Stars and Blues, two of the top three teams in all of hockey, are meeting in the second round (this after a first-round series against Chicago for St. Louis), while the Sharks and Predators -- the No. 11 and No. 14 teams among the 30 in the NHL, based on points -- may meet for the right to face the winner. And things are only marginally better on the East side:
Washington (120 points, No. 1 seed) vs. Pittsburgh (104 points, No. 2 seed)
Tampa Bay (97 points, No. 6 seed) vs. New York Islanders (100 points, No. 5 seed)
In that scenario the Capitals, coming off one of the 10 best regular seasons in NHL history, are rewarded with a series against the Penguins, while the Islanders and Lightning, the NHL's 10th- and 12th-best teams, respectively, get each other. It's a completely insane way of crowning a champ, and it's exclusively a result of the NHL forcing division rivals on each other, balance be damned.
Before you stop me, I know. One of the NHL's greatest charms is its parity, and quite often, the best teams fizzle in the playoffs while a low seed riding a hot goalie can find itself lifting the Cup.
Last year the Blackhawks finished the regular season with the seventh-most points among the 16 total playoff teams, then won the Cup. The year before, the Los Angeles Kings were 10th of 16, and in 2012, under a traditional playoff format, the 8-seed Kings steamrolled everyone in their path once the puck dropped on the postseason.
But there's something inherently unjust about setting a team like this year's Lightning up to succeed while high seeds that earned the right to call their own shots are guaranteed to fail before they reach the conference finals. That doesn't mean that Tampa Bay, for example, couldn't or wouldn't beat the Caps or Pens to get back to the Cup final, but it should have to do more than beat the 15th- and 10th-ranked teams in the NHL to get the chance.
In a perfect world, every professional sports league would abolish the division and conference system altogether and rank all the teams that qualify for the playoffs in order of record. That postseason format is actually what the NHL used it in 1980 and 1981, after the league grew to 21 teams with the addition of the Oilers, Whalers, Nordiques and Jets following the WHA merger.
Such a proposal is currently not on the horizon in any of today's leagues, of course, and it's unknown whether such a plan will ever be up for discussion. But in the meantime, the NHL could take a massive step toward equity by reverting to the previous system, allowing rivalries to form on their own rather than forcing the ones that already exist to the detriment of the playoffs as a whole.
You can follow Sam Gardner on Twitter or email him at samgardnerfox@gmail.com.
